For now treat the pay and benefits as zero and focus on what really matters. Which one will give you the most challenge and highest responsibility? 2-3 years f

For now treat the pay and benefits as zero and focus on what really matters. Which one will give you the most challenge and highest responsibility? 2-3 years from now, your salary wont matter that much. So you made 80k, whooptidoo. Pay-check money comes and goes, but experience is eternal. And so are contacts and exposure. The lack of structure should be encouraging. You will be the one to bring order to the chaos; you and the team will go through hell together, and that will shape you, in a year's time, better than any school. If you don't make much money, the experience you gain from a position of heavy responsibility will give you a lot of back-bone. I spent 6-months building a startup with someone; it wasn't mine, I was freelancing, but I made all architectural decisions and coded the initial version all by myself. I made pennies, worse than minimum wage. But since then, all my job interviews felt like an interrogation, with all the power on my side. I could pick and choose who to work with and how much of myself to give them. I conjured up my salary and fees, based on faulty mental arithmetic and currency conversion, and had them agree to an atrocious figure that added up to my income from the previous 3 years combined. Experience under high pressure and immense constraints will trump a pay check, equity, or whatever monetary gain you can imagine. Three years ago I used to hope for a "Programmer I" position. Today .. heh, "keep the titles, but first tell me a little about yourself" .. I can safely say I am more cautious of my heart than the prettiest of girls in my high-school. Along with the right money, I demand the right people to believe in, because I know what I am talking about :-) Go for the more ambitious startup and give it your all. Two part-time jobs don't make a career.